Posted by Jon Leibowitz on January 21, 2007 at 1:31 PM
If you go to make a print and your colors are off on the print what steps do you take? Do you ask the printer to try something else? Go back to the RAW image and re-edit? Change the colors of the edited photo? Or just give up all hope and never make a print of that photo?
Posted by Pam Colander on January 21, 2007 at 1:55 PM
Hi Jon,
Do you know what color profiles your printer uses? Did you embed that specific ICC profile in the image when you were processing it? There is a chance they (the print company) might be off on their colors. Check their site to see if they offer any recourse for prints that are off. They may not. I have found color profiling to be a REAL education and a vital one if you plan on printing your work. Is your moniter color calibrated? That could be a big culprit. I had colors being off issues until I purchased a calibrater and have not had any since. I am BY NO MEANS an expert on this as I'm sure others here are. That's just been my experience.
Pam
Posted by Les Barstow on January 21, 2007 at 1:59 PM
That really depends on what "off" is...
Some labs (like Costco and PhotoCraft) have special instructions for printing images that you yourself have profiled and color-corrected; be sure you specified the correct processing. Some only do pre-profiled prints, and will never apply corrections themselves. Others will "fix" the image you submit no matter what; even if you've done all the work, they'll print what they think is "best" for your image - kind of like getting prints from negative film. If you've got one of the latter, find a different printer.
With local printers, you can print a proof if you've got a small photo printer. With online printers, you can contact them and describe the problem. There *are* limitations on printer output; for the longest time, I couldn't print anything with warm brown or dull green branches on my Epson R800, because the ICC profiles wouldn't translate those tones well; now with my R1800, they include much better profiles and I can print those images. LightJets with Fuji Crystal Archive cannot render the full spectrum of oranges and reds found in sunsets; you have to live with a slightly compressed spectrum.
Posted by Nat Coalson on January 21, 2007 at 3:27 PM
Simply stated, the answer is a color-managed workflow both for you and the vendor.
For you, at the bare minimum, your monitor MUST be calibrated to have any hope of achieving predictable results.
And as Les mentioned, ICC profiles are a basic requirement fo understanding how your prints will look from a given prin device. Depending on the software you're using to process your images, you can (and should) Soft Proof your images prior to printing, using the profile for that printer. You can them make adjustments to the image for that specific output scenario. If profiles are not available for a given scenario, it's hit-and-miss, but if your monitor is calibrated and profiled, you can compare the printed output with the image on screen to make any necessary adjustments.
The second important consideration is what's known as rendering intent, which in a digital printing environment controls how out-of-gamut colors for a given device will be re-mapped to fit in the range of available colors.
This is such a deep subject that I don't think it can be adequately addressed in this context; if you email me I'd be more than happy to help work out your troubles.
One of the best tutorials I've found is at drycreekphoto.com. If it's still confusing after reading this, contact me. One of my past trainees basically took this info and wrote it up in a much more "user friendly" doc for printing at Costco.
Posted by Momo Vuyisich on January 21, 2007 at 5:53 PM
I have a suggestion for the poster, and a question for all.
My suggestion is to calibrate the monitor to sRGB (most monitors have that preset), work with files in PS in sRGB color space, then use a printing service that uses that color profile. This is what I do, and the printed colors are always 100% identical to the photos displayed on my monitor.
The question for all is: is there a drawback to the above-described workflow? Am I missing out on something, like some cool-looking colors or shades? Thanks.
Posted by Les Barstow on January 21, 2007 at 7:07 PM
You're missing out on pretty much exactly what you suggested: some cool-looking colors/shades.
I'm not really sure just how much you're missing out on, because I can't see them when I'm processing them on my monitor! Drycreekphoto.com has a neat colorspace browser that will allow you to see the shortcomings of various printer devices and colorspaces.
Posted by Jon Leibowitz on January 21, 2007 at 10:32 PM
" I have a suggestion for the poster, and a question for all.
My suggestion is to calibrate the monitor to sRGB (most monitors have that preset), work with files in PS in sRGB color space, then use a printing service that uses that color profile. This is what I do, and the printed colors are always 100% identical to the photos displayed on my monitor.
The question for all is: is there a drawback to the above-described workflow? Am I missing out on something, like some cool-looking colors or shades?"
Anyone else know the answer to that?
Posted by Nat Coalson on January 22, 2007 at 12:34 PM
Working in sRGB is not the best choice if you're planning to print on an inkjet printer. sRGB is a relatively small color space :that's what the "s" stands for) and is used by light-based laser printers such as LightJet, Chromira, Lumira etc. These are the devices most commonly used by digital photo labs.
If you're printing to an inkjet printer, you will have a much wider range of colors possible if you work in Adobe RGB, or even better, ProPhoto. You can always convert from these color spaces to sRGB later, for a specific output device, but the reverse is not possible - converting from sRGB to a larger space won't yield any new colors.
Re: calibrating your display - use a hardware solution such as Gretag MacBeth's EyeOne to create a custom profile for your monitor. Your display should be re-calibrated at least every few weeks.
Posted by Momo Vuyisich on January 22, 2007 at 2:39 PM
Thank you for the explanation Nat!
Posted by Jon Leibowitz on January 22, 2007 at 10:46 PM
Nat, so if I'm printing on printing in a professional place that uses light printers, sRGB is OK? Or do most professional labs not use light printers?
Jon, you can think of sRGB as the lowest common denominator for a variety of devices. Most custom color spaces are larger than sRGB (or have portions that extend beyond it). Yes you will probably be "ok" with sRGB as your working color space but you will also miss out on using the full range of colors and tones the printer is capable of.
Some labs will have you send the file in whatever profile you want and will do the conversion themselves while others provide you with custom profiles for their printers that you can use for proofing or to convert the files yourself. The basic requirement to using these profiles is that your own screen should be calibrated to ensure consistency.
Setting sRGB as your working color space is like having a protein shake and steamed broccoli for every meal. Yeah, you'll be "ok", but you'll also be missing out on all sorts of fun stuff.
Guy
Posted by Nat Coalson on January 23, 2007 at 2:24 PM
Well put, Guy...
Here is a screen shot from Monaco GamutWorks showing the three main RGB working spaces: sRGB, Adobe RGB (1998) and ProPhoto.
The largest space shown here is ProPhoto, followed by Adobe RGB, then sRGB.
The 3D rendering shows superimposed representations of the 3-dimensional volume of each color space. The 2D line drawing is each space overlaid at an L value of 50.
This illustrates how each space contains not only more or less colors, but different colors.
Although sRGB is less than half the volume of ProPhoto, you can see that there are some colors in the blue and purple range of sRGB that are not present in ProPhoto; same for Adobe.
The main point to understand is that every image has color in it that cannot be reproduced in a given space. The rendering intent (typically relative colorimetric or perceptual) within the Color Management System controls how the out-of-gamut colors will be remapped to the destination space.
Also important is to understand that what is shown here are only Working Spaces. In the following post see the screen caprure that depicts how Adobe RGB compares to the Fuji Frontier.
Posted by Nat Coalson on January 23, 2007 at 2:25 PM
Fuji Frontier (in blue) and Adobe RGB in black. Lots of these colors would need to be remapped.
Posted by Nat Coalson on January 23, 2007 at 2:27 PM
Frontier and sRGB. These spaces are much closer in size, which illustrates why it's often OK to work in sRGB for images destined for a light-based printer.
But for MAXIMUM QUALITY throughout your workflow, you owe it to yourself to always work in the largest color space possible, and simply save derivative files converted to the appropriate destination spaces. Same as when you have to convert files for web use.
You can still see the Frontier has a lot more colors in the green/blue range than exist in sRGB. There are also colors in sRGB that don't exist in the Frontier space so you may get clipping if your image contains those.
Nat had the bottom line right - to maximize quality you need to see the effect of color space remapping before the file goes to print, otherwise you are setting yourself up for surprises.
Guy
Posted by Les Barstow on January 23, 2007 at 3:39 PM
Stupid question: how do you "see" the effect of your colorspace mapping if you're using a computer monitor (theoretical colorspace similar to sRGB) when doing your work? I happen to have an Epson R1800 on my desk; this gives me good control, because I can always fire off a "proof" and re-adjust. What's the workflow for someone who doesn't have a good printer on their desk? How do you "see" those extra colors?
Les, you can't always see it but you can see the effects of it (for example banding artifacts, clipped channels etc.) Photoshop also gives you a way of soft-proofing and highlighting out-of-gamut areas in the image. Essentially you configure your target color space (in Proof setup) and your conversion intent, and you can then turn gamut warnings on/off and adjust the image to correct them.
Guy
Posted by Nat Coalson on January 27, 2007 at 10:49 AM
Gamut warning can be quite useful, but like Guy said there's not really a way to directly see how colors in your image will map to the destination space within Photoshop. Gamut warning will only show you what colors are out-of-gamut, but not where they fall in relation to that part of the destination space.
However, most profile editing apps will let you load an image into the tool in addition to color profiles.... see below for a screen shot of one of my images displayed against my custom profile for Epson Premium Luster (in blue). The red squares represent pixel values of the image. You can clearly see where the values fall outside the destination space in both the highlight and shadow values, though all the midtones are well within gamut.
I've found this is most often the case: your out-of-gamut colors will be either highlight or shadow tones, or in very saturated colors (meaning the value of at least one channel is 255).
Discussion
18 repliesDo you know what color profiles your printer uses? Did you embed that specific ICC profile in the image when you were processing it? There is a chance they (the print company) might be off on their colors. Check their site to see if they offer any recourse for prints that are off. They may not. I have found color profiling to be a REAL education and a vital one if you plan on printing your work. Is your moniter color calibrated? That could be a big culprit. I had colors being off issues until I purchased a calibrater and have not had any since. I am BY NO MEANS an expert on this as I'm sure others here are. That's just been my experience.
Pam
Some labs (like Costco and PhotoCraft) have special instructions for printing images that you yourself have profiled and color-corrected; be sure you specified the correct processing. Some only do pre-profiled prints, and will never apply corrections themselves. Others will "fix" the image you submit no matter what; even if you've done all the work, they'll print what they think is "best" for your image - kind of like getting prints from negative film. If you've got one of the latter, find a different printer.
With local printers, you can print a proof if you've got a small photo printer. With online printers, you can contact them and describe the problem. There *are* limitations on printer output; for the longest time, I couldn't print anything with warm brown or dull green branches on my Epson R800, because the ICC profiles wouldn't translate those tones well; now with my R1800, they include much better profiles and I can print those images. LightJets with Fuji Crystal Archive cannot render the full spectrum of oranges and reds found in sunsets; you have to live with a slightly compressed spectrum.
For you, at the bare minimum, your monitor MUST be calibrated to have any hope of achieving predictable results.
And as Les mentioned, ICC profiles are a basic requirement fo understanding how your prints will look from a given prin device. Depending on the software you're using to process your images, you can (and should) Soft Proof your images prior to printing, using the profile for that printer. You can them make adjustments to the image for that specific output scenario. If profiles are not available for a given scenario, it's hit-and-miss, but if your monitor is calibrated and profiled, you can compare the printed output with the image on screen to make any necessary adjustments.
The second important consideration is what's known as rendering intent, which in a digital printing environment controls how out-of-gamut colors for a given device will be re-mapped to fit in the range of available colors.
This is such a deep subject that I don't think it can be adequately addressed in this context; if you email me I'd be more than happy to help work out your troubles.
My suggestion is to calibrate the monitor to sRGB (most monitors have that preset), work with files in PS in sRGB color space, then use a printing service that uses that color profile. This is what I do, and the printed colors are always 100% identical to the photos displayed on my monitor.
The question for all is: is there a drawback to the above-described workflow? Am I missing out on something, like some cool-looking colors or shades? Thanks.
I'm not really sure just how much you're missing out on, because I can't see them when I'm processing them on my monitor!
My suggestion is to calibrate the monitor to sRGB (most monitors have that preset), work with files in PS in sRGB color space, then use a printing service that uses that color profile. This is what I do, and the printed colors are always 100% identical to the photos displayed on my monitor.
The question for all is: is there a drawback to the above-described workflow? Am I missing out on something, like some cool-looking colors or shades?"
Anyone else know the answer to that?
If you're printing to an inkjet printer, you will have a much wider range of colors possible if you work in Adobe RGB, or even better, ProPhoto. You can always convert from these color spaces to sRGB later, for a specific output device, but the reverse is not possible - converting from sRGB to a larger space won't yield any new colors.
Re: calibrating your display - use a hardware solution such as Gretag MacBeth's EyeOne to create a custom profile for your monitor. Your display should be re-calibrated at least every few weeks.
Some labs will have you send the file in whatever profile you want and will do the conversion themselves while others provide you with custom profiles for their printers that you can use for proofing or to convert the files yourself. The basic requirement to using these profiles is that your own screen should be calibrated to ensure consistency.
Setting sRGB as your working color space is like having a protein shake and steamed broccoli for every meal. Yeah, you'll be "ok", but you'll also be missing out on all sorts of fun stuff.
Guy
Here is a screen shot from Monaco GamutWorks showing the three main RGB working spaces: sRGB, Adobe RGB (1998) and ProPhoto.
The largest space shown here is ProPhoto, followed by Adobe RGB, then sRGB.
The 3D rendering shows superimposed representations of the 3-dimensional volume of each color space. The 2D line drawing is each space overlaid at an L value of 50.
This illustrates how each space contains not only more or less colors, but different colors.
Although sRGB is less than half the volume of ProPhoto, you can see that there are some colors in the blue and purple range of sRGB that are not present in ProPhoto; same for Adobe.
The main point to understand is that every image has color in it that cannot be reproduced in a given space. The rendering intent (typically relative colorimetric or perceptual) within the Color Management System controls how the out-of-gamut colors will be remapped to the destination space.
Also important is to understand that what is shown here are only Working Spaces. In the following post see the screen caprure that depicts how Adobe RGB compares to the Fuji Frontier.
But for MAXIMUM QUALITY throughout your workflow, you owe it to yourself to always work in the largest color space possible, and simply save derivative files converted to the appropriate destination spaces. Same as when you have to convert files for web use.
Nat had the bottom line right - to maximize quality you need to see the effect of color space remapping before the file goes to print, otherwise you are setting yourself up for surprises.
Guy
Guy
However, most profile editing apps will let you load an image into the tool in addition to color profiles.... see below for a screen shot of one of my images displayed against my custom profile for Epson Premium Luster (in blue). The red squares represent pixel values of the image. You can clearly see where the values fall outside the destination space in both the highlight and shadow values, though all the midtones are well within gamut.
I've found this is most often the case: your out-of-gamut colors will be either highlight or shadow tones, or in very saturated colors (meaning the value of at least one channel is 255).